Those Damn Guns Again

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post


New York Journal News Publishes Gun Owners' Names In Westchester, Rockland Counties

A New York newspaper is under criticism for publishing the names and addresses of local gun owners on Monday.

In a piece titled, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," the Journal News requested the names and addresses of local residents who are licensed to own handguns through Freedom of Information Law requests. The paper requested information from Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. The paper was only given the names and addresses of those who have a license to own a handgun. The paper was denied its requests for the number and type of guns owned by those who have licenses. Putnam County was still working on the request and has not yet released information to the Journal News.

The article includes an interactive map of Westchester and Rockland counties that allows readers to view those who have a license to own handguns around them.

The article also has an editor's note attached to it describing the type of gun the journalist who wrote the article owns. "Journal News reporter Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011," it states.

Some critics felt the Journal News article put people in danger. "Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves? What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are," one commenter wrote on the newspaper's website. Others worried that the names would expose law enforcement officials. "You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents — they have permits. Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way," Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, told Journal News reporter Worley.

ABC News reached out to the Journal News for a statement. The paper told ABC that its readers "are understandably interested to know about guns in their neighborhoods," after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The Journal News is owned by Gannett.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post


New York Journal News Publishes Gun Owners' Names In Westchester, Rockland Counties

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Isn't it already illegal to sell a gun to a known felon, or provide a gun to be later used in a criminal act? If someone is doing that then they aren't law-abiding, so stop lumping the average gun owner with people who enable criminal activity.

Enforce those laws then we can talk about a new limitation.

And losing your gun to criminals, I don't even know what that means. People are already accountable for their guns. Like I said previously, Illinois requires you to certify the state of your weapon every year or two. I'm sure other states do something similar.

In general, people already face charges if a gun registered to them is used in a crime and they never reported it stolen or missing. Maybe everyone should be allowed to carry their legal gun since you want them to face penalties if they leave it at home and it's randomly stolen.


I don't know, but thoughtone told me it was gun show loopholes.

So tighten that up, which I already said I agree with, and stop looking to limit everyone else.

Address the people causing the problem. Don't come up with solutions that only affect the behavior of people who aren't hurting anyone.

I don't see a lot of space between us on this one. It should be pointed out that many of those people that legal own and sell firearms do so in a reckless and illegal way so if we don't "limit everyone else", how will laws, that are already on the books, be enforced without effecting everyone?

So law-abiding teachers should not have the right to defend themselves?

Let me take that question back;

At what point would you support a teacher defending him / herself whose life is in danger?

You didnt answer my question but I'll answer your question.

When a teacher is off school property, they can carry whatever the law allows.

Now
How many children is an acceptable number to be hurt or killed by a gun in a teacher's desk?

 

[thoughtone]

You didnt answer my question but I'll answer your question.

Typical.

 

[Greed]

I don't see a lot of space between us on this one. It should be pointed out that many of those people that legal own and sell firearms do so in a reckless and illegal way so if we don't "limit everyone else", how will laws, that are already on the books, be enforced without effecting everyone?



You didnt answer my question but I'll answer your question.

When a teacher is off school property, they can carry whatever the law allows.

Now
How many children is an acceptable number to be hurt or killed by a gun in a teacher's desk?

Two people own a gun legally, one engages in a behavior that contributes to criminal activity. Target the behavior. If you see people as individuals, then don't target both gun owners where one is doing nothing wrong. How is that justice?

 

[thoughtone]

Two people own a gun legally, one engages in a behavior that contributes to criminal activity. Target the behavior. If you see people as individuals, then don't target both gun owners where one is doing nothing wrong. How is that justice?

Two people own a gun legally, one engages in a behavior that contributes to criminal activity

If it were only one, you might have a legitimate argument.

 

[Greed]

If it were only one, you might have a legitimate argument.

Once again, a principle is a foreign concept to you, especially a just one.

 

[Greed]

Bullets Are Safety Net as 64 Mentally Ill Die at Hands of Police

Does this count as mass murder?

 

[thoughtone]

Once again, a principle is a foreign concept to you, especially a just one.

Didn't a Principal get shot to death over a principle?

 

[Greed]

Didn't a Principal get shot to death over a principle?

Yes, now can you say which principle led to her death?

My principle that she should have been allowed to carry if she saw fit, or your principle to limit the actions of people who have done nothing wrong and treat them like the criminals?

 

[Greed]

Bullets Are Safety Net as 64 Mentally Ill Die at Hands of Police

Does this count as mass murder?

Military Mental Health Crisis Exposed With Camp Liberty Killings

How do we limit guns in the military?

Or maybe the real root is how we deal with mental illness at every level in our society?

 

[thoughtone]

Yes, now can you say which principle led to her death?

My principle that she should have been allowed to carry if she saw fit, or your principle to limit the actions of people who have done nothing wrong and treat them like the criminals?

Unfortunately, when it comes to killing, all those that possesses a killing machine have to have their rights limited.


Principle in the hands of the right is destroying this country and the world.

 

[Greed]

Unfortunately, when it comes to killing, all those that possesses a killing machine have to have their rights limited.


Principle in the hands of the right is destroying this country and the world.

That's the logic of the majority that will do what it wants anyway because they can get away with it.

 

[QueEx]

​

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Two people own a gun legally, one engages in a behavior that contributes to criminal activity. Target the behavior. If you see people as individuals, then don't target both gun owners where one is doing nothing wrong. How is that justice?

The behavior is usually already targeted so the next step is to target the tools.

 

[actinanass]

Well Ar's are going for 2 stacks minimum right now.

Good luck getting them guns back.

 

[Lamarr]

Well Ar's are going for 2 stacks minimum right now.

Good luck getting them guns back.

Having this conversation with the fam, I feel like I'm sittin with a "bunch of Thought1's"

The young males are on my side, but these females need some guidance.

 

[actinanass]

Having this conversation with the fam, I feel like I'm sittin with a "bunch of Thought1's"

The young males are on my side, but these females need some guidance.

my girl was like that...

 

[Greed]

The behavior is usually already targeted so the next step is to target the tools.

Is it targeted well? Just because it's difficult to get it right doesn't mean it's fine to make things harder for non-criminals just because you can.

Protecting individual rights while maintaining public safety is hard, but so what. If the people governing can't do it then they should resign, and you shouldn't cheer them on just because it's not you they're hindering.

 

[Lamarr]

Here comes the compromise

Karl Five commends Obama's Commission on Gun Control, Calls For Comprehensive BiPartisan Solution.

If there was any doubt about what side Karl Rove was on in the gun control debate, it should now be abundantly clear. Rove stepped squarely into the President’s camp on Monday, lauding calls for a commission to take on the problem of gun violence in America.

The former Bush strategist made clear that mental health and assault weapons should be constituents of a comprehensive bi-partisan approach to dealing with the issue.

Once again, Washington stumbles over itself in an attempt to come up with a “reasoned approach” to insanity.

Perhaps one of the more troubling aspects of the whole discussion was the fact that no one seemed to be concerned with the Constitutional issues surrounding the Second Amendment. How nice that the Republican establishment has such an historically illiterate and morally vacuous spokesman on its side!

 

[thoughtone]

Well Ar's are going for 2 stacks minimum right now.

Good luck getting them guns back.

Guess what, if they make them illegal like the Brady law did, You won't be able to sell them....legally! 2 stacks down the drain!

source: Think Progress

Thousands Of L.A. Citizens Choose Groceries Over Handguns


Thousands of Los Angeles’ citizens lined parking lots yesterday in a chance to exchange their guns for groceries in a city-organized buyback program. The event, normally an annual Mother’s Day event, was pushed up to Wednesday by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT.


City officials offered up to $100 in gift cards to a local grocery chain for rifles, handguns, and shotguns, with assault weapons fetching more, up to $200 in cards. Despite moving the date, turnout was extremely high, with the two parking lots where the buybacks took place finding themselves overcrowded at times by eager sellers. In fact, the city found itself surpassing last year’s total of 1,673 guns by yesterday afternoon:

Many came bearing more than one gun. They pulled 22 pistols from the trunk of one white Honda, a haul that earned the driver $1,000.

Two men in a pickup truck with two children in the back seat handed over a rifle, a pistol and a MAC-12, altered with a silencer.
​

While the majority of the guns retrieved were handguns and other small-scale weapons, at least “a few dozen” assault weapons were taken off the streets as well. One of the first guns purchased in the buyback was a Bushmaster rifle of the same model as those used in the Conneticut shooting and a planned attack in New York where two firefighters were targeted and killed.

Since its inauguration in 2009, the gun buyback program has purchased over 8,000 guns from L.A. citizens, according to Mayor Villaraigosa. While gun buyback programs are not the most effective way to lower gun violence, they do reduce the supply of firearms in a community. Several other communities will be running their own in the near future, including Newtown’s neighboring city Bridgeport.
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[thoughtone]

source: Think Progress

How The NRA Stifled Gun Violence Research

The tragic massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT on Friday reignited the debate over the solution to America’s gun problem. President Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a task force to examine the available evidence and make recommendations for new policies to prevent the next shooting. But thanks to a concerted, 20-year effort by the National Rifle Association, the available evidence is severely lacking.

While pushing a radical agenda to arm as many people in as many places as possible, the NRA has also maintained a side campaign to quash research into the effects of gun laws. The group successfully lobbied to cut off almost all funding for such studies. The Center for Disease Control, once the main patron of gun violence research, was stripped of funds for firearms research. The agency has not conducted any studies on the matter since 1996. As a result, the debate that arises after each shooting has very little evidence to consider.

Scientists and researchers who want to study why American gun homicides are so much higher than all other developed nations are now dependent on just a few private foundations still willing to brave the wrath of the gun lobby. The NRA has continued its intimidation campaign even as gun violence research becomes virtually nonexistent:

The amount of money available today for studying the impact of firearms is a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s, and the number of scientists toiling in the field has dwindled to just a handful as a result, researchers say.
​

The conversation could benefit from improved data on gun possession, acquisition, according to one such researcher, Garen Wintemute. Wintemute was part of a 2011 panel that called for more studies of experimental gun control programs on the local and state levels, as well as more studies on how and where criminals acquire their guns.

Gun control advocates have wasted no time since the elementary school shooting to push for reform, such as bans on assault weapons and on high-capacity clips. The National Rifle Association has preferred to stay silent until their conference on Friday. Still, the group is already trying to stifle the conversation, calling the assault weapons ban “a failed experiment.” But as more NRA-backed lawmakers break from the official line to support gun safety measures, the group may have a hard time keeping others silent.

 

[thoughtone]

Sen. Boxer Proposes Deploying National Guard at Schools

Now I know where Lamarr got this. From his programmer. It blew his circuit board when it was the NRA that was actually behind it!

source: Think Progress


GOP Rep: NRA Plan To Put Guns In Schools Would Create ‘Orwellian Surveillance State’

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) blasted National Rifle Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s plan to put armed guards in school, worrying that it would lead to “an Orwellian police state in America.” Paul, a libertarian most famous for his numerous presidential runs, connected the NRA proposal to onerous TSA regulations in statement on his official website:

Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches? We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders. This is the world of government provided “security,” a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse. School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.
​

While Paul’s right to highlight the troubling implications of the NRA proposal in terms of expanding police presence and power, the armed guards plan also wouldn’t work as a practical matter. Schools with armed guards have been the victims of several mass shootings. There probably aren’t enough adequately trained police officers to do the job. And more guns in schools could very well make the problem worse.

Unfortunately, Paul also repeated several myths about guns in an attempt to equate calls for regulation of gun ownership with the NRA’s lunacy. His suggestion that “more guns equals less crime” is belied by the most recent research; the reverse is most likely true. Likewise, Paul’s claim that “private gun ownership prevents many shootings” is not supported by any real research. And the idea that gun control can’t work because “criminals don’t obey laws” misunderstands the several policy proposals on the table that would almost certainly save lives.

Paul appears to simply oppose any action to address gun murders, saying somewhat bizarrely that “our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.” His conclusion is the same as that of the editors of National Review: mass murder is the price of freedom.
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[Lamarr]

I shall name our new country "Surveillistan"

Honestly, I just found it ironic that Boxer made a proposal & the NRA just happened to be thinking along the same grounds. Doesn't anyone see there is no difference between the parties?

No compromise, you can have your Boxer / NRA proposal !

 

[thoughtone]

I shall name our new country "Surveillistan"

Honestly, I just found it ironic that Boxer made a proposal & the NRA just happened to be thinking along the same grounds. Doesn't anyone see there is no difference between the parties?

No compromise, you can have your Boxer / NRA proposal !

Sounds like your boy is one of them.

 

[Ruff Ryder]

 

[QueEx]

​

 

[thoughtone]

source: Who What Why


Fact-Checking Wayne LaPierre


Recently, on NBC’s Meet the Press, David Gregory asked Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association why he would not support decreasing the number of permissible rounds held in ammunition magazines, as a way of reducing the number of dead. He proposed, for the sake of discussion, reducing the number of rounds in a magazine from, say 20, to 10.

LaPierre’s reply:

“I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that, even if you had that. You had that for 10 years when (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein passed that ban in ’94. It was on the books. Columbine occurred right in the middle of it – it didn’t make any difference.”

What was LaPierre talking about, and did what he said make sense?

In 1994, President Clinton signed Feinstein’s bill that banned the manufacture of additional semi-automatic weapons. It did not eliminate those already in use. Dylan Klebold, one of the two gunmen at the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, relied primarily on a 9 mm Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, attached to a strap hung over his shoulder. To the casual eye, it looks like a short machine gun—and in fact, the original design was for a machine gun.

As the Denver Post reported some months after the Columbine attacks, “Klebold’s TEC-DC9 was made during the congressional debate by a Miami gun maker who tripled production to beat the ban – and called it his best year ever.”

So the gun LaPierre was referring to was manufactured before Feinstein’s bill even went into effect. On this count, his statement is highly misleading.

Furthermore, at Columbine, where 12 students and one teacher died and 24 others were injured, Klebold carried one 52-, one 32-, and one 28-round magazine. He fired the semi-automatic 55 times that day. Had he had smaller magazines, as suggested by Gregory to LaPierre, he would have had to stop to reload far more frequently, thereby stalling the onslaught, at least briefly, and gaining precious seconds for precious lives.

So LaPierre’s even raising the issue of Feinstein’s bill was a red herring—a distraction from the substance of what Gregory was saying. Thus, while it was true that Feinstein’s bill did not prevent the carnage at Columbine, the proposal Gregory was referring to…very likely would have.

Feinstein, whose original bill was allowed to lapse after a decade by Congress, is planning new legislation that will permit those who already own various semi-automatic-type weapons to keep or transfer them, but ban their manufacture, sale, transfer or ownership by anyone else. It will also ban weapons that can accept the sort of detachable magazines Klebold used in Columbine, as well as handguns holding more than 10 rounds.

LaPierre and the NRA will almost certainly oppose the legislation.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Mother Jones


A Wee Comparison of Civil Liberties in the United States of America


Compare and contrast. Here is how seriously we take civil liberties when the subject can be plausibly labeled terrorism:

[New rules] allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.
​

And here is how seriously we take civil liberties when gun ownership is involved in any way, shape, or form:

Under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions....When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau’s National Tracing Center here — a windowless warehouse-style building on a narrow road outside town — begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm.

....The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, for example, prohibits A.T.F. agents from making more than one unannounced inspection per year of licensed gun dealers. The law also reduced the falsification of records by dealers to a misdemeanor....The most recent Tiahrt amendment, adopted in 2010...requires that records of background checks of gun buyers be destroyed within 24 hours of approval. Advocates of tighter regulation say this makes it harder to identify dealers who falsify records or buyers who make “straw” purchases for others.
​

So that's where we are. The federal government can swoop up enormous databases, keep them for years, and data mine them to its heart's content if it has even the slightest suspicion of terrorist activity. Objections? None to speak of, despite the fact that terrorism claims only a handful of American lives per year. But information related to guns? That couldn't be more different. Background checks are destroyed within 24 hours, serial numbers of firearms aren't kept in a central database at all, and gun dealers can barely even be monitored. All this despite the fact that we record more than 10,000 gun-related homicides every year.

Compare and contrast.

 

[thoughtone]

That's the logic of the majority that will do what it wants anyway because they can get away with it.

1st amendment: can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

 

[thoughtone]

I shall name our new country "Surveillistan"

Honestly, I just found it ironic that Boxer made a proposal & the NRA just happened to be thinking along the same grounds. Doesn't anyone see there is no difference between the parties?

No compromise, you can have your Boxer / NRA proposal !

Paul appears to simply oppose any action to address gun murders, saying somewhat bizarrely that “our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.” His conclusion is the same as that of the editors of National Review: mass murder is the price of freedom.
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Ron Paul is very moral.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post


UN Arms Treaty: NRA Vows To Fight Regulation Of $70 Billion Global Arms Trade


UNITED NATIONS, Dec 28 (Reuters) - The leading U.S. pro-gun group, the National Rifle Association, has vowed to fight a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global arms trade and dismissed suggestions that a recent U.S. school shooting bolstered the case for such a pact.

The U.N. General Assembly voted on Monday to restart negotiations in mid-March on the first international treaty to regulate conventional arms trade after a drafting conference in July collapsed because the U.S. and other nations wanted more time. Washington supported Monday's U.N. vote.

U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense pressure to tighten domestic gun control laws after the Dec. 14 shooting massacre of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. His administration has since reiterated its support for a global arms treaty that does not curtail U.S. citizens' rights to own weapons.

Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence and a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.

In an interview with Reuters, NRA President David Keene said the Newtown massacre has not changed the powerful U.S. gun lobby's position on the treaty. He also made clear that the Obama administration would have a fight on its hands if it brought the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

"We're as opposed to it today as we were when it first appeared," he said on Thursday. "We do not see anything in terms of the language and the preamble as being any kind of guarantee of the American people's rights under the Second Amendment."

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms. Keene said the pact could require the U.S. government to enact legislation to implement it, which the NRA fears could lead to tighter restrictions on gun ownership.

He added that such a treaty was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate necessary for approval.

"This treaty is as problematic today in terms of ratification in the Senate as it was six months ago or a year ago," Keene said. Earlier this year a majority of senators wrote to Obama urging him to oppose the treaty.

U.N. delegates and gun-control activists say the July treaty negotiations fell apart largely because Obama, fearing attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the Nov. 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, sought to kick the issue past the U.S. vote.

U.S. officials have denied those allegation.

The NRA claimed credit for the July failure, calling it at the time "a big victory for American gun owners."


NRA IS 'TELLING LIES'

The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world's biggest arms trader, which accounts for more than 40 percent of global transfers in conventional arms - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.

Supporters of the treaty accuse the NRA of deceiving the American public about the pact, which they say will have no impact on U.S. domestic gun ownership and would apply only to exports. Last week, Amnesty International launched a campaign to counter what it said were NRA distortions about the treaty.

"The NRA is telling lies about the arms treaty to try to block U.S. government support," Michelle Ringuette of Amnesty International USA said about the campaign. "The NRA's leadership must stop interfering in U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the arms industry."

Jeff Abramson of Control Arms said that as March approaches, "the NRA is going to be challenged in ways it never has before and that can affect the way things go" with the U.S. government.

The draft treaty under discussion specifically excludes arms-related "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State."

Among its key provisions is a requirement that governments make compliance with human rights norms a condition for foreign arms sales. It would also have states ban arms transfers when there is reason to believe weapons or ammunition might be diverted to problematic recipients or end up on illicit markets.

Keene said the biggest problem with the treaty is that it regulates civilian arms, not just military weapons.

According to the Small Arms Survey, roughly 650 million of the 875 million weapons in the world are in the hands of civilians. That, arms control advocates say, is why any arms trade treaty must regulate both military and civilian weapons.

Keene said the NRA would actively participate in the fight against the arms trade treaty in the run-up to the March negotiations. "We will be involved," he warned, adding that it was not clear if the NRA would address U.N. delegates directly as the group did in July.

The NRA has successfully lobbied members of Congress to stop major new gun restrictions in the United States since the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. It also gives financial backing to pro-gun candidates.

EXPLOSIVE ISSUE

European and other U.N. delegates who support the arms trade treaty told Reuters on condition of anonymity they hoped Newtown would boost support for the convention in the United States, where gun control is an explosive political issue.

"Newtown has opened the debate within the United States on weapons controls in ways that it has not been opened in the past," Abramson said, adding that "the conversation within the U.S. will give the (Obama) administration more leeway."

Keene rejected the idea of bringing the Newtown tragedy into the discussion of an arms trade treaty.

"I find it interesting that some of the folks that advocate the treaty say it would have no impact whatever within the United States but that it needs to be passed to prevent another occurrence of a school shooting such as took place in Newtown," he said. "Both of those positions can't be correct."

Obama administration officials have tried to explain to U.S. opponents of the arms trade pact that the treaty under discussion would not affect domestic gun sales and ownership.

"Our objectives for the ATT (arms trade treaty) have not changed," a U.S. official told Reuters. "We seek a treaty that fights illicit arms trafficking and proliferation, protects the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade, and meets the concerns that we have articulated throughout."

"In particular, we will not accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to bear arms," the official added.

Supporters of the treaty also worry that major arms producers like Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and others could seek to render the treaty toothless by including loopholes and making key provisions voluntary, rather than mandatory.

The United States, like all other U.N. member states, can effectively veto the treaty since the negotiations will be conducted on the basis of consensus. That means the treaty must receive unanimous support in order to be approved in March.

But if it fails in March, U.N. delegations can put it to a vote in the 193-nation General Assembly, where diplomats say it would likely secure the required two-thirds majority

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Is it targeted well? Just because it's difficult to get it right doesn't mean it's fine to make things harder for non-criminals just because you can.

Protecting individual rights while maintaining public safety is hard, but so what. If the people governing can't do it then they should resign, and you shouldn't cheer them on just because it's not you they're hindering.

It's not targeted as well as it should be due to interference from the gun manufacturer's lobby (the NRA).
Still, if the complaint isn't that you won't be able to get guns but you might have to take an extra step to get them, this is a childish argument.



So no movement on my question of how many dead children is acceptable in the quest to arm teachers? I see AAA has made an appearance so if he wants to take a shot, I'd appreciate it.

While I think the idea of armed security is a good one, it should be noted that Columbine High School had armed security, they were just outgunned.

 

[thoughtone]

<iframe src="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data" width=800 height=1000></iframe>

 

[thoughtone]

source: CBS News


Firefighter Shootings Update: Woman arrested, linked to guns in N.Y. Christmas Eve ambush, police say

(CBS/AP) WEBSTER, N.Y. - A 24-year-old woman was arrested Friday and charged in connection with the guns used in the Christmas Eve ambush slaying of two volunteer firefighters responding to a house fire in upstate New York.


PICTURES: Cops: NY ex-con gunned down firefighters


Dawn Nguyen of Rochester faces state and federal charges, State Police Senior Investigator James Sewell said.


<!--pagebreak-->Sewell said the state charge of filing a falsified business record is connected to the purchase of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun that William Spengler had with him Monday when firefighters Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down. Three other people were wounded before the 62-year-old Spengler killed himself.


He also had a .38-caliber revolver, but Nguyen is not connected to that gun, Sewell said.


The .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, which had a combat-style flash suppressor, is similar to the one used by the gunman who massacred 20 children and six women in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school earlier this month.


Nguyen and her mother, Dawn Welsher, lived next door to Spengler in 2008. On Wednesday and again on Friday, shortly before her arrest, she answered her cellphone and told The Associated Press that she didn't want to talk about Spengler. Her brother, Steven Nguyen, told the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of Rochester that Spengler stole the guns from Dawn Nguyen.


Spengler set a car on fire and touched off an inferno in his Webster home on a strip of land along the Lake Ontario shore, took up a sniper's position and opened fire on the first firefighters to arrive at about 5:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve, authorities said. He wounded two other firefighters and an off-duty police officer who was on his way to work.


A Webster police officer who had accompanied the firefighters shot back at Spengler with a rifle in a brief exchange of gunfire before the gunman killed himself, an autopsy determined.


Spengler spent 17 years in prison for killing his grandmother in 1980 and was barred from possessing weapons as a convicted felon.


Investigators still haven't released the identity of remains found in William Spengler's burned house. They have said they believe the remains are those of his 67-year-old sister, Chery lSpengler, who also lived in the house near Rochester and has been unaccounted for since the killings.

Complete coverage of the Webster firefighter shootings on Crimesider